Madam Speaker, this adjournment debate stems from a question I asked earlier about how we deal with wildfires in Canada: When will the federal government create a national wildfire-fighting force?
As we all know, last year was the worst year ever for wildfires in this country. This year, all predictions point to an even more disastrous fire season. We have already had evacuation orders in British Columbia and Alberta in April. Last year, we had fires all across the country, from Halifax to Yellowknife and Vancouver Island.
I want to pause here to pay tribute to all the firefighters and other first responders who worked so hard to keep Canadians safe during last year's firestorms. Eight firefighters in the prime of life lost their lives in last year's battle against those fires, and I attended the memorial service for one of those young people in Penticton.
It is clear that local and provincial wildfire-fighting services were overwhelmed last summer. Even in British Columbia, where we unfortunately are very accustomed to catastrophic fires, the BC Wildfire Service, one of the best in the world, had to bring in crews from all over the world to help out. Indeed, thousands of firefighters from Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa, Costa Rica, Chile, Spain, Portugal, France, Brazil and the U.S.A. came to Canada last summer to help us deal with that crisis.
We are grateful for that international help, but it comes at a cost: the cost of paying the crews, the cost of bringing them to Canada and, perhaps most of all, the critical cost of time lost in making those arrangements. Provincial and municipal forces become overwhelmed and costs are exploding. B.C. spent about a billion dollars last summer fighting fires, last year alone.
We need to have a homegrown response that is both timely and cost-effective. In response to this accelerating crisis, experts have been calling for the formation of a national wildfire-fighting service.
Dr. Mike Flannigan, from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, is Canada's foremost expert on wildfire behaviour. While firefighting is normally a provincial area of authority, Flannigan points out that the last few years have put us in uncharted territory. He has suggested a national wildfire service of a few hundred well-trained members divided into teams that could be deployed to parts of the country that face clear and imminent fire threats.
We have the modelling power and the expertise now to know where fires are likely to become problematic in the coming days and even weeks. We should have teams on the ground so that they are there when fires ignite and can be extinguished. Fires not caught in those first few hours can become the catastrophic firestorms that destroy huge areas of forest, as well as homes and livelihoods. Getting those crews to the fires quickly is essential, and we can do that with a national force.
That force could work year-round. The fire season is growing longer and longer. It is already year-round in California. We could put this force to work in the Canadian winter, working to thin forests in the interface with communities across the country, doing FireSmart inspections or being mobilized to other countries that are facing a wildfire crisis.
The government is proposing training local residents to fight interface fires. That is important and useful. We already rely on volunteer crews to cover structure protection. However, a national force would be a game-changer, and we really need to change the game on wildfire fighting in this country.
